Ezra Klein’s unassailable observation, that the president more nearly resembles a moderate Republican of early 1990’s vintage than a socialist Muslim born in Kenya, will probably be misinterpreted by a lot of progressives as an insult. But Klein’s point is not to complain about Obama’s policies, but to defend them as thoroughly mainstream. That is why Klein documents the support prominent Republicans displayed for an individual mandate in health care, Cap and Trade environmental policy, and sane tax policy, before those policies were offered by a Democrat. I think Klein is mostly interested in the possibility that Republicans are moving right, not out of any shift in principles, but out of a simple refusal to cooperate with a Democratic president.
What is of more concern to progressives, however, is that the political landscape has shifted so far to the right that Democrats are now being labeled as radicals for proposing Republican solutions to our problems. I don’t have a solution for this. At least, nothing comes to mind in the short-to-medium term. As I have argued for two years, the way our system is set up constitutionally, combined with the rules of the Senate, and exacerbated by the Citizen’s United ruling, the minority has effective veto power and the minority is completely in the hands of corporate interests.
Real change is possible, but extraordinarily difficult. Only fate can tell us whether we’ll be able to change the composition of the Supreme Court. No amount of lobbying or organizing will have any impact on that whatsoever, except insofar that it keeps a Democrat in the White House in case a conservative judge leaves the Court. We aren’t going to abolish the Senate and the Senate’s failure to change its rules after the unprecedented obstruction of the last Congress proves that those rules are unlikely to ever change. I haven’t even mentioned the media, but that is just one more example of out-sized corporate influence in our politics. We can strengthen the reach of citizen-journalism, but we can never match the reach of the major networks and radio syndicates.
What’s going on in the Republican Party isn’t sustainable, but as long it lasts, the country actually needs a caretaker that represents the silent majority of sane people. That means that the Democratic Party has the heavy responsibility of being a welcome home to people who were moderate Republicans in the early 1990’s. This is not a necessity driven by ideology. It’s driven by the loss of a responsible alternative to liberalism. It’s also driven by the simple impossibility of overcoming the effective veto-power of Senate Republicans over all congressional legislation. The rise of the DLC took us to much the same place, but for a different reason. Klein might be right that the GOP has moved right simply to remain in clearly-defined opposition. If that is true, the limited success of the DLC had an unintended consequence. The quest for corporate financing moved the Democrats temporarily to the right, which led the right to march over a cliff, which left the Democrats holding onto the rope, trying simply to keep the whole country from slipping over the edge.
Things would be bad and unmanageable even without a Great Recession and unending military commitments all over the globe.
I’m sorry to paint this depressing picture, but this is what things have come to. Progressives need to look at long-term solutions, but they also need to keep a tight focus on the here and now. Things can definitely get worse. There is a lot of dead weight, and it’s uncertain that we can hold on.
So the prez is like a 1990’s Republican? Gosh, I guess DADT never went into effect.
It’s hard to tell what progressive means. Obama has done a lot and as long as the House is R, not much will get done. It will be battle after battle.
This country has come a long way, but that gets tossed into the trashcan when the complaints shower down on the prez. I don’t mean you Boo.
Holding the line against those who want to destroy the social contract is not a bad thing.
Oh look, more hurt feelings and a constantly shifting battleground that treats policy distinctions as irrelevant to how something “makes you feel.”
Ezra is talking about a fiscal-economic axis: health care, environment, education, fiscal balancing with mixed spending cuts/tax hikes. And yes, if you actually bother to understand where the Obama policies came from, they are all in step with the previous generation of mainstream Republicans, pre-reactionary insurrection/pre-Greenspanism.
But wait, he’s really socially liberal you say! Well, yeah. Duh. But that isn’t on the policy axis Ezra is talking about.
All the internet can offer is the “Yeah, but wait!” school of argument. Both sides.
Obama’s environmental policies are muddled and insufficient? Yeah, but wait! Gay rights! Why don’t you talk about that, huh?
Obama’s health insurance reform advances the country towards universal coverage? Yeah, but wait! Afghanistan! Why don’t you talk about that, huh?
It’s not all good or all bad. It’s a mix. If you can’t handle that, if you can’t strip out whatever feelings you have for the president as a symbol and a person from matters of policy, then no wonder you spend all your time online forming insular cliques and screaming about words like “obots” and “the professional left.”
I couldn’t understand a word of your comment. Emo and unclear.
Well, since you didn’t understand Ezra or BooMan either, you’re on quite a roll here.
Stop worrying about defining people as moral or immoral actors. It isn’t about “morality,” it’s about the real political space that we find ourselves in.
Saying Obama’s policies used to be Republican policies back when the GOP occasionally operated in the realm of fleeting sanity != Obama is a Republican, worst president ever, primary him now!
Nor does it make him a “bad person.” In fact, whether he’s a “good person” is irrelevant, because he’s not making moral judgments in a vacuum. He’s constrained by the political space.
Recognizing this space exists, and trying to find ways to alter it, was the point of BooMan’s post. And Ezra’s. Not disparaging the President. His record on gay rights has nothing to do with anything.
Hmmm. And I understood every single word.
This doesn’t help when I talk with friends who are Republicans. They just stick their fingers in their ears and call me a socialist — which depending on your definition could be accurate.
The public just can’t seem to reach a breaking point with the Republican extremism, and I think it’s because leadership signals it that way. If you look at climate denial, it trends well with the way that the leaders signal about it. By refusing to believe it, their supporters refuse to believe it. So in a way the Democrats pushed the country to the right in this context.
I can understand people being economically conservative, even in the David Stockman sense. I cannot have tolerance for Republicans, though. None; none whatsoever, and that especially includes the rank-and-file like my parents.
So what you are essentially saying is that the only road back to any sense of sanity or semblance of functional government is for one of two things to happen. Either the voting public, in general, must have some kind of epiphany as to what is really being done by our elected officials in their name and for them to rise up in disgust and revulsion and throw them out at the ballot box, while at the same time demanding a set of specific actions to correct the horrendous damage done over the last 30 years. I see this scenario as pretty unlikely, given the current environment.
The other thing would be for there to be a complete collapse of representative democracy in this country, essentially a revolution, which would allow us to begin to reconstruct something which actually works to benefit people in the way which it was intended. After, of course, an indefinite period of anarchy, chaos and violence.
Given the state of today’s GOP and their voting base, I’m afraid the second option sounds like it might be the more plausible.
Or option #3: keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
Think about civil rights organizers in the 1930s, or 1890s. Think about feminists in the 1940s or 1870s. Think about labor leaders in the 1920s and 1980s. Think about Arab democracy and human rights activists in the 1990s.
In some eras the responsibility one faces is to continue the struggle, knowing that the revolution (or whatever change one envisions) isn’t going to happen soon, and may not happen in one’s lifetime.
Also, if you’d like a slightly more concrete reason for hope, take a look at what’s going to happen to the electorate in the next decade or so: older, whiter, more conservative voters disproportionately dying off; younger, much-less-white, more liberal voters turning 18 at the rate of 4 million a year.
Be careful – I’ve heard that logic before; it was the logic behind the creation of the Moral Majority…
The truth is that sanity is relative – some people value outcomes over process while others value process over outcomes, and the spectra of processes and outcomes is unlimited, each preference being equally valid for each individual voter – so it would be hard to argue that a majority of the people are “sane” by any political definition. The majority of people are ambivalent, much more interested in Dancing With The Jersey Shore American Idol Stars than H.R. 1…
Progressives need to look at long-term solutions, but they also need to keep a tight focus on the here and now.
Well, the best solution over the long term is for progressives to make the Democratic Party focus its message and be consistent so that there is clear alternative message to Republican bullshit. In the short run, that would probably drive away any supposedly sane Republicans that are seeking a home, as well as a number of overly conservative Democrats. But if progressives let the corporatists keep running the Democratic Party, all that will happen is that Democrats will put a brake on the decline of America.
this is a variation of the ‘framing’ argument. We’ll get progressive legislation if we just ask for it the right way.
No.
We won’t.
Not ever.
Only changes in the structure of our government and how its elected officials are financed can possibly bring significant progressive change.
White progressives can’t get elected statewide in 90% of the country and black/latino progressives are at about close to zero.
Expecting the Democratic Party to be progressive under these circumstances is foolish. You can’t talk them into doing something that they have no interest in doing and which, under the circumstances, they can’t do anyway.
Only changes in the structure of our government and how its elected officials are financed can possibly bring significant progressive change.
And how are those changes going to come about unless we elect more progressives? Certainly you don’t think we’ll get the changes if we just ask for them the right way?
Yes, electing progressives is key. But badgering some Democrat from Middle Tennessee to vote like a Chicago or Los Angeles Democrat is not going to do anything. The Middle Tennessee Democrat won’t get the funding he or she needs if they vote like Maxine Waters. Our system is screwed up.
Republicans have become so over in their attempt to crush the middle class and disenfranchise as many as possible, it’s a pushback of sorts to electing Obama. Things could get much worse, it’s hard not to be depressed about the outlook. I agree with your post Booman. Much slow slogging ahead of us.
I no longer believe change is possible without destruction. Historically, that is not a very good reason to hope either (very easy for things to get even more right wing in chaos) but I no longer care to prop up the fiction.
Ah, and also, slow slogging will not do anything to save us because of things like Peak Oil and climate change. We can no longer deal with the problems slowly.
And, to these twin menaces, one can add increased earthquake activity and its effect upon nuclear power plants and their ever increasing amounts of radioactive waste. Planetary perils continue to strengthen, regrettably.
Never in my lifetime has it been so important to simply recognize that there is an element in the Rep party that is leading them over the cliff and to follow them by continuing to engage in their lead on the debate, where they are doing a fine job all by themselves of destroying the total package of Republicanism, is truly truly a waste of time & leverage.
Instead, Obama needs to set himself apart. It all reminds me of standing in a fishing boat where the well is filled with dying and gasping fish flopping around, the fisherman simply closes the tank lid and goes back to steering the boat home.
you speak a whole lotta truth.
I think this is a great post, but there are some other options, namely Obama could just propose popular progressive policies to start the negotiations on the left and then compromise right around where republicans were in the early 90s. Like all progressives, i can live with compromise and moderate positions, its all in the way that Obama refuses to even support as an opening offer liberal policies.
So you’re saying grit your teeth and support Obama. Of course we will. but lets not pretend that there’s not another option- Obama could just be the liberal progressive that half the country thinks he is anyway. Since nobody (besides Ezra) understands or cares to understand what left, center and right mean, then why not just do what you want to do, why make as your opening offers the same positions as Dick Lugar in 1993?
The answer, which I know you disagree with, is that Obama isn’t really a liberal. The policy preferences of 1993 Dick Lugar are actually Obama’s 2011 policy preferences.
Maybe. But it’s important to remember that you could bring FDR back from the dead and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing with Mitch McConnell. LBJ could tongue-lash Tom Coburn until the cows came home, and it wouldn’t yield any compromise. Obama’s moderation can probably best be described as a combination of not wanting to make too many promises he can’t keep and being interested in modest progress now over moving the debate for later.
I agree with that. As of today, the policy choices and limitations are a result of various moves that Obama, congressional dems and congressional republicans have made since January 2009. but I disagree that a modern incarnation of FDR or LBJ would, assuming they used different strategy, tactics and pursued different policies, would be as restricted as Obama is today.But no way to know any of this for sure, i recognize this- maybe trying different tactics and strategies gets us to the same place or worse. But I also don’t think its useful to just say that all of Obama’s setbacks are systemic. And I do think its useful to consider the possibility that his “setbacks” are actually his policy preferences.
I don’t think it’s useful because it makes no sense. I think Obama would have been very happy to sign nearly every bill that Nancy Pelosi produced, which would have been a Niagara-like flood of progressive legislation. Instead, he got to sign none of it. There is no evidence, and no reason to believe, that Obama prefers the shitty oatmeal that Harry Reid produces.
Hmm, my gut instinct makes me want to say “Obama blocked grassroots lobbying in favor of the shitty oatmeal” but I actually don’t recall if that was in connection with legislation or caucus discipline.
But it makes us progressive heroes happy by calling him a sellout sonuvabitch. Doesn’t really accomplish anything though.
I think that’s a little simplistic. Its not a matter of just sitting back and waiting to see what bill comes back from Congress. The historical record is already significantly confused on whether Obama engaged too much or too little on health care, but he definitely engaged a lot.
Again, I’m not trying to get too bogged down on hypotheticals, but Obama could have taken a less insurance company favorable approach on health care, he could have not allegedly bargained away the public option in closed door meetings, he could have followed Rahm’s advice and not give Baucus a few precious months to chase unicorn republican votes, he could have early on in the process just said that the GOP was acting in bad faith and that it was time for the Dem caucus to just get it done. He could have said that since the GOP has given control of their procedural votes to McConnel, our caucus members would be asked to do the same and give their procedural votes to Reid. Failrue to do so would result in being on the President’s bad side. Again, I’m not saying I know politics better than a single person in the White House. But there were different strategies, different tactics, different deals that could have been struck on health care and in hindsight, many of them seem so obvious that you kind of have to believe that mistakes were made or that the end result wasn’t too dissimilar to what Obama wanted.
I don’t want to write another history of the health care battle.
So, rather than quibble with your history, I’ll take a different approach.
Imagine the Senate did not exist. All we have is the House. Now, imagine the House as it was constituted in 2009-2010.
Now that you’ve got that in your mind, go back in time to the Democratic primaries. Each candidate would have offered a bolder less insurance-friendly plan because there were competing with each other for liberal votes. And with only Pelosi to convince (essentially) they would be free to promise a very aggressive health care plan. And they would be serious. They could actually make it happen.
Now, flip back to 2009-2010. Having campaigned on a more aggressive health care plan, and having won bigger majorities in the House, the new Democratic president can muscle home anything they want, up to the point where health industry lobbying dollars and corporate-dominated media actually place a brake.
Pretty much any true Democrat, including Obama, would go for a much more robust health care reform if they could actually get elected campaigning for one and get it accomplished once in office.
But that is so far from where we are in this country that it has no relevance.
None of the major Democratic contenders were willing to insult our intelligence or alienate corporate interests for no good reason by promising much more health care reform than they could possibly deliver.
Obama only had 60 votes for three months and he used it to get the bill through the Senate (the main bill, not the reconciliation). But he never had 60 votes for the public option. He knew that as soon as he surveyed the Senate in February 2009.
So, let’s stop pretending that the Senate rules aren’t forcing the president to the right. They force the whole country to the right.
Going through another health care history is like a trip to the dentist.
Indeed.
And it’s not just health care. Other legislation, like the Recovery Act would have been bigger and better in Booman’s hypothetical Senate-free universe. (Or even in a universe in which the Senate operated on majority rule.)
In addition, take a look at the 300+ bills that passed the 2009-10 House that never even got to a vote on the Senate floor. Obama would have signed them all, and it would have been a flood of progressive legislation (arguably) exceeding the New Deal and Great Society in their scope and impact.
The answer, which I know you disagree with, is that Obama isn’t really a liberal. The policy preferences of 1993 Dick Lugar are actually Obama’s 2011 policy preferences.
This is not quite true. I’d say that the policy preferences of 1993 Bill Clinton are actually the policy preferences of 2011 Barak Obama and he’s compromised to somewhere around 1993 Dick Lugar.
Whether that makes Obama a liberal or not a a liberal is, I guess, dependent on whether one thinks that Bill Clinton was a liberal or not a liberal.
Personally I don’t think Obama is particularly liberal in the economic sense, I think he’s socially liberal economically conservative (though not economically reactionary like the modern GOP) much like Clinton was. And much like a good-sized chunk of the Democratic Party voters are.
But then I never got the impression from his campaign that Obama was particularly economically liberal or running as an economic liberal. He ran as more liberal than John McCain, but 2008 John McCain was more economic reactionary than 1993 Dick Lugar, so just about anyone who would be willing to put a (D) by their name in the race is going to look liberal by comparison.